Safety considerations with older cars

[singlecoil]

A couple of years ago I was in an accident, only one car involved, thank goodness. It was my wife's Citroen C3 ( a small hatchback). We struck a patch of black ice while doing about 50mph. The car went out of control, struck the grass bank at the side of the road, struck the substantial hedge a glancing blow, went on its side and ended up back in the middle of the road. The air bags went off at some point.

Apart from a few bruises we were ok.

The incident gave me great respect for modern safety devices such as airbags etc. Now the reason I'm raising this topic is that I'm in the market for a car and the type of car I would really love to have is the BMW E30, which discontinued about the time that airbags were being introduced, and as far as I know, no E30 has them.

I'm guessing that people who own and drive classic cars do not concern themselves with this type of safety consideration, so hopefully I will hear reasons why I should join their number and set aside such concerns.

I have owned a good many classic cars over the years (e.g. Triumph Vitesse, Rover 2000TC, Mk1 Capri), but this was when they were not so much classics, just old

[Loplop]

singlecoil said:

A couple of years ago I was in an accident, only one car involved, thank goodness. It was my wife's Citroen C3 ( a small hatchback). We struck a patch of black ice while doing about 50mph. The car went out of control, struck the grass bank at the side of the road, struck the substantial hedge a glancing blow, went on its side and ended up back in the middle of the road. The air bags went off at some point.

Apart from a few bruises we were ok.

The incident gave me great respect for modern safety devices such as airbags etc. Now the reason I'm raising this topic is that I'm in the market for a car and the type of car I would really love to have is the BMW E30, which discontinued about the time that airbags were being introduced, and as far as I know, no E30 has them.

I'm guessing that people who own and drive classic cars do not concern themselves with this type of safety consideration, so hopefully I will hear reasons why I should join their number and set aside such concerns.

I have owned a good many classic cars over the years (e.g. Triumph Vitesse, Rover 2000TC, Mk1 Capri), but this was when they were not so much classics, just old

I'm a banger racer as well as a classic car lover/collector (3 and rising!) and the cars I own tend to be 'rated' track tools, such as the Mk2 Granada Estate and Triumph 2000. Seeing a Mk2 Granada plow into several other Mk2 Granadas at around 40mph and continuously back off it offers me some form of confidence! Same reason I feel safe in Austin A60s

[Flatinfourth]

I suppose its appreciating that every periond of car has safety features appropriate for that period. if you are driving a post world war 1 aero engined special with no screen, no front brakes, seat belts, artillery wheels and big horsepower, then you get it completely!

I tend to be more uneasy about cars like the Cerbera, which has very limited ability to manage side impact, is as fragile,performance oriented and demanding to drive as any other TVR,now dont get me wrong i love them and ran a Griffith 200 for years for a client, and it was truly mind bending-but the Cerbera presents as a sort of family sports car with its four seats.

An E30 is a nice place to be, and strong

[HustleRussell]

Active safety has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of decades, but passive safety goes back much further. Older cars need not be inherently unsafe, they just lack the occupant protection found in more modern cars. Take a pragmatic approach to defensive driving and your likelihood of being involved in an accident and the severity of the accident if/when it happens is reduced.
If this means driving your E30 at 30mph instead of 50mph in the C3 when conditions are freezing and there is an ice risk, then so be it. If this bothers you, you can either buy a more modern car or drive your 'older' car in the same way you'd drive a modern one and accept your vulnerability.

P.S. was there really never an E30 with airbags?

[illmonkey]

E30's are pretty solid, but not if rusty. I had a (what I thought) good nick example, until it rear ended someone, turns out some of the engine bay was rusted and it just had no strength, crumbled like cheese, luckily it was at a slow speed.

I do think about the safety issue of older cars, but it quickly drifts out of my mind when I see them. I don't do many miles, so it's probably an easy choice for me.

[Hooli]

HustleRussell said:

Active safety has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of decades, but passive safety goes back much further. Older cars need not be inherently unsafe, they just lack the occupant protection found in more modern cars. Take a pragmatic approach to defensive driving and your likelihood of being involved in an accident and the severity of the accident if/when it happens is reduced.
If this means driving your E30 at 30mph instead of 50mph in the C3 when conditions are freezing and there is an ice risk, then so be it. If this bothers you, you can either buy a more modern car or drive your 'older' car in the same way you'd drive a modern one and accept your vulnerability.

This a lot.

Old cars are safe, you just have to drive them. I prefer older cars for this reason as they aren't full of gimmicks that stop you controlling the car (or seeing out enough) to avoid having the accident in the first place. I'd much rather avoid the crash than be slightly safer during the crash.

[madjules]

I’m lucky enough to have a late sixties Lancia and late eighties Esprit.

The main thing for me is that when you are driving these cars, especially the Lancia, your far more connected and ‘know’ if your are driving and hit something, it’s going to hurt!! Trust me, it focuses the mind.

My understanding is that the single biggest automotive life saver of the twenty century was seatbelts. Both my cars have a good set fitted and it shouldn’t be a problem to fit them in most post war cars.

Also serious accidents are still rare and coupled with the very limited miles driven in a classic I would imagine the risk of a KSI would still be far less than your daily hack.

I’m sure some people actively drive old cars to escape the ultra safe cosseted world in which we live.

[OllieC]

I dont concern myself with how safe a car is when I am driving it (beside it being in good mechanical order)

Not sure I would extend the same attitude to when Mrs C and our baby are in the car though...

She doesn't like the Crapi anyway because its smells and is noisy

[rallycross]

In todays world the E30 does feel old, small, and your passengers tend to feel more vulnerable.

I've got an E30 and an E90 at the moment. When I got my first E30 back in 1995 it felt quite big and strong compared to other cars of the time, but now have to admit when I get out of the new model 3 series into the old E30 it feels very old.

But they are well built/solid, eg compared to a modern french car you feel like there is a lot more metal around you in an E30. You wont need the airbags if you dont crash!

[garethj]

Agree with the points made by other posters, but just coming back to this for a moment

singlecoil said:

We struck a patch of black ice while doing about 50mph. The car went out of control, struck the grass bank at the side of the road, struck the substantial hedge a glancing blow, went on its side and ended up back in the middle of the road. The air bags went off at some point.

Apart from a few bruises we were ok.

This is quite an “easy” accident to have; you scrub off speed quite gradually. As long as the roof pillars aren’t so slim that the roof caves in (not a problem with most cars from the 1980s on) then the most significant damage is through flying glass or hitting a limb on something sharp. Flying glass doesn’t hurt too much and seat belts take care of the rest.

If you’re going to have an accident where you plough into a tree at high speed, especially if you hit the tree with one corner rather than the whole front of the car, be in something new.

But I’d always consider the alternative of not crashing. Not crashing is:

a) Cheaper
b) Makes for a faster journey
c) Less stressful
d) Avoids the need to swear down the phone to ambulance chasers

Take steps to avoid crashing, it’s always a benefit. It amazes me the number of people who’ll happily spend an extra 5 grand on a newer car with more safety features but won’t spend a few hundred on advanced driver training to anticipate hazards.

Enjoy the Beemer!

[griffter]

OP makes a reasonable point, although I think anything post-70 or so with a strong passenger shell and crumple zones is a good start. Certainly a strcturally sound e30 shouldn't be a diaster.

But I have had a TVR Griffith and an Elise. What contributed to me selling both was that in the event of someone else's stupidity (4x4 or truck crossing onto my side of the road for example) what chance would I and whichever of my children was with me have stood?

I now have a E24 6 series, which I feel much safer in (whether I actaully am, I hope not to find out).

[The Surveyor]

singlecoil said:

I'm guessing that people who own and drive classic cars do not concern themselves with this type of safety consideration

I'd have thought that everybody will give safety a consideration, it's just not always the primary consideration when chosing to drive something older and more interesting. I'm pleased that the accident you had didn't result in any serious injuries, and modern cars are, in many ways better than older cars as you'd expect.. all in the name of progress etc.... You may not have faired so well in a 2CV for example but given that classic car drivers generally cover far fewer miles, drive with more consideration to the limitations of their cars, statistically you'll be in no more danger than driving a modern (probably!). Also, you can counter any 'elf and safety' negatives with the positives of added fun

Paul

[singlecoil]

Thanks for the replies so far.


I should point out that not all accidents are the fault of the driver, one cannot always, by careful/skilled driving, stop people crashing in to you. Should such a thing happen at high speed then the difference between old and new cars might not matter, but a lot of such accidents take place at lower speeds.

[garethj]

singlecoil said:

I should point out that not all accidents are the fault of the driver, one cannot always, by careful/skilled driving, stop people crashing in to you

I think you can in lots and lots of cases. It's the reason that some people have a crash (even though was the other person's fault) every year or two whilst others avoid it for decades.

But that's probably straying off the point, which I don't want to do.

[ewenm]

singlecoil said:

Thanks for the replies so far.


I should point out that not all accidents are the fault of the driver, one cannot always, by careful/skilled driving, stop people crashing in to you. Should such a thing happen at high speed then the difference between old and new cars might not matter, but a lot of such accidents take place at lower speeds.

You can do a lot to minimise the chances of being caught up in someone else's accident though. Leaving a decent gap everywhere, always having an escape route if someone pulls out without looking (or whatever). I find that I'm a lot more alert to that sort of thing in the Caterham than in the Volvo and even in the Volvo I'm a lot more cautious than the OH is - she sometimes puts the car in places I wouldn't.

[austin]

I wouldn't be doing 50mph on icy roads whatever car I was driving let alone an old one.

Driving my old cars, (no safety features what so ever) I make sure that I drive very defensively and am aware of what is going on all around me.

If you think there is a chance that someone might pull out on front of you slow down and let them out. It's not worth the risk of injury / death!

People do odd things when they see unusual cars on the road, there are time that you know they have seen you and then still pull out, it's happened to me several times in the last year.

[singlecoil]

austin said:

I wouldn't be doing 50mph on icy roads whatever car I was driving let alone an old one.

Do you know what the most dangerous thing about black ice is? If you don't, the danger is not so much that it's slippery, but that you don't know that it's there at all. The clue is in the name.

The recovery driver told us that ours was the sixth car he had collected that morning, and that was not unusual when the temperature was actually a couple of degrees above zero, as it was in our case.

[crankedup]

Our Son had a massive accident after hitting black ice whilst driving his Renault 5 Turbo. I won't go into the accident details but the car was completely wrecked including the roof. A wooden telegraph post was snapped off like a carrot, the car went down a 7' ditch bank and back up onto the road, then barrel rolling down the road. Police shut the road immediately convinced it was a fatal accident, by the grace of God our lad was almost unhurt!! That was a 1987 car in factory standard order. I cannot say at what speed he was travelling at at time of accident, he has told me since. Our lad has reflected upon his good fortune several times since.

[garethj]

Agreed, ice is one of the few times when anticipation isn't the whole answer, you need some luck too!

Only last week I was trundling down an icy residential road at just over walking speed, everything was fine until there was a particularly icy spot when grip was zero.

But for most other situations, your own skill is worth far more than NCAP stars as I'm sure you know.

Back on track, I do about 20,000 miles a year in a car without airbags, ABS or anything like it. Sometimes it's scary, like when you see a car where the driver's checking his Twitter account and straying across the white line, but otherwise I've had no ill effects.

[Pothole]

singlecoil said:

A couple of years ago I was in an accident, only one car involved, thank goodness. It was my wife's Citroen C3 ( a small hatchback). We struck a patch of black ice while doing about 50mph. The car went out of control, struck the grass bank at the side of the road, struck the substantial hedge a glancing blow, went on its side and ended up back in the middle of the road. The air bags went off at some point.

Apart from a few bruises we were ok.

The incident gave me great respect for modern safety devices such as airbags etc. Now the reason I'm raising this topic is that I'm in the market for a car and the type of car I would really love to have is the BMW E30, which discontinued about the time that airbags were being introduced, and as far as I know, no E30 has them.

I'm guessing that people who own and drive classic cars do not concern themselves with this type of safety consideration, so hopefully I will hear reasons why I should join their number and set aside such concerns.

I have owned a good many classic cars over the years (e.g. Triumph Vitesse, Rover 2000TC, Mk1 Capri), but this was when they were not so much classics, just old

Did the airbag(s) definitely save you from significant injury or is that just an assumption?

How many other accidents have you been involved in during normal driving since you passed your test and, by the same token, how many do you expect to be involved in from now until you have to stop driving? (I guess this answer could be 1, but probably not)

I'd say drive what you like to drive, and drive it according to your own perception of 'safety'. I don't drive less carefully in car with airbags and extra safety features (I drive my '99 Peugeot 306 the same way as I drove my '98 Volvo S90, for instance)